In part, it’s because “bricked” carries echoes of “b0rked” an earlier and colorful term to much the same effect. But whereas “b0rked” brought to mind the failed Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, “bricked” gets a lot closer to the truth: you now own a very expensive brick.

But really, I love “bricked” because it’s a great example of verbing done right. “To brick” means “to turn into a brick”—the construction is both clearly right and also not a common pattern among nouns-turned-into-verbs. More often, “to X” means “to use an X”: direct, but also bland.

So here’s to “bricked,” and to all of my brothers and sisters who are suffering the agony of a bricked iPhone.

Is “bricking the camel” at all similar to the bit in Settlers of Catan where you can turn three sheep into one brick? …No, no, it’s probably not like that at all.

I’ve always sort of had this mental picture of some diabolical machine which compresses unfortunate farm animals into small, dense building material form. I know, it’s a horrible thing to contemplate. I blame the Germans.